Deadly Russian Strike Hits Odesa Cathedral

Odesa: Russia struck the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa again on Sunday, local officials said, keeping up a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week.

At least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in the attack in the early hours.

Russia has been launching persistent attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain, since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal on Monday amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories.

In one such case in downtown Odesa, some people became trapped in their apartments as a result of the damage caused by the attack, which left rubble strewn in the street and partly blocking the road, and damage to power lines.

Svitlana Molcharova, 85, was rescued by emergency service workers. But after she received first medical aid, she refused to leave her destroyed apartment.

“I woke up when the ceiling started to fall on me. I rushed into the corridor,” said Ivan Kovalenko, 19, another resident of the building. He came to Odesa having fled the city of Mykolaiv in search of a safer place to live after his house was destroyed.

“That’s how I lost my home in Mykolaiv, and here, I lost my rented apartment.” In his home, the ceiling partially collapsed, the balcony came off the side of the building, and all the windows were blown out.

“The destruction is enormous, half of the cathedral is now roofless,” said Archdeacon Andrii Palchuk, as cathedral workers brought documents and valuable items out of the severely building, the floor of which was inundated with water used by firefighters to extinguish the fire.

Palchuk said the damage was caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile that penetrated the building down to the basement and caused significant damage.

“But with God’s help, we will restore it,” he said, bursting into tears.

Odesa’s historic centre was designated an endangered World Heritage Site by the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO, earlier this year, despite Russian opposition.

Earlier Russian attacks this week crippled significant parts of export facilities in Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk and destroyed 60,000 tons of grain, according to Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry.

The attacks come days after President Vladimir Putin pulled Russia out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a wartime deal that enabled Ukraine’s exports to reach many countries facing the threat of hunger.

In other developments:

• Russian president Vladimir Putin and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko are set to meet on Sunday in St Petersburg, two days after Moscow warned Poland that any aggression against its neighbor and ally Belarus, would be considered an attack on Russia.
• Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov reported Sunday morning that two people were killed in Russian strikes on the northeastern province on Saturday, when Russia attacked populated areas of the Kharkiv, Chuhuiv, Kupiansk and Izium districts.
• Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Sunday that four residents of the eastern region were killed on Saturday, with 11 further wounded.